Counterfeit Cowgirl (Love and Laughter) (14 page)

Two faces turned toward him. Pansy’s wrinkled like a catcher’s mitt, Nate’s already grinning.

“She already left,” Pansy groused. “With nothing but an orange between her and starvation.”

“Left?” Ty asked. Panic tasted bitter.

Nate laughed. “Geez, brother, have some pride. She didn’t skip the country. She just went out to the barn.”

Ty scowled and ran his fingers through his hair. “How’d she look?” he asked.

Nate’s expression brightened even more as he shrugged. “I don’t know. Kind of like a blond Cindy Crawford.”

Ty made a noise that sounded surprisingly like the cat’s. “Was she limping?”

“Limping?” Pansy and Nate said together.

Nate’s expression was happier than ever. “What the…”
He glanced at the minuscule cook, checked his profanity and continued. “…
heck
did you do to her?”

“It’s none of your business,” Ty said, and hurried outside. He found her in the horse barn, just peeling Nate’s loop from the roping dummy. Leaning against the wall behind him, he watched her for a moment.

She’d pulled her hair into a flaxen ponytail that stuck out of the hole in the back of her cap. The word
Pioneer
was written across the crown. Her legs, encased in pale denim, looked slim and endless, and her torso was hugged by one of Howard’s old shirts. It was Western cut, with little peaks on each pectoral. The peaks reached nearly to her nipples, and at the end of each peak was a pearl-toned snap. God help him!

“I thought you were going to sleep in,” he said.

She looked up with a gasp. “Oh! No.” She drew a deep breath. “I wasn’t tired.”

Pushing himself off the wall, he took a few strides toward her. “You should be off that ankle.”

She cleared her throat and coiled her lariat Never in his life had he seen a messier job done of it. “It’s fine now,” she said, and glanced up at him.

“Yeah?” It was absolutely the only word he could think of to say when she looked at him like that.

“Yes.”

There was silence after that clever exchange.

“Listen,” He broke the quiet with too much volume and felt foolish because of it. “We’ll be taking Houdini into the Valley today for the stock show. I was wondering…”
Don’t clear your throat, don’t scrape your boot around in the dust, and for God’s sake, don’t blush like some half-witted hayseed,
he warned himself. “I was wondering if you’d like to come along,” he said.

“Well, I—”

“I could use the help,” he said quickly, then slowed his words and his breathing. “We’d be back tomorrow.”

“I’d better stay here and keep an eye on the stock.”

“Nate said he wanted to.” It was a blatant lie. And not a good one. Nate might be a fair hand with the cows and a damn fine headin’ partner, but he wasn’t the kind to miss a day in town. “He said he’d like you to go instead of him. You may think showing a bull is all glamour and glory. But it ain’t going to get me on ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.’” He tried a smile to go with his clever wit. Geez, he was sad. And desperate. Desperate to be near her. To speak to her. To hear his name on her lips.

She lifted the rope. “But I should—”

He interrupted her again. “You could bring your lariat. In fact, they might have some roping demonstrations. You could pick up a few pointers.”

“Well…” She paused. He held his breath like a child awaiting a lollipop. “I guess if you don’t mind.”

“Mind?” He almost choked on the word, but caught a draft of pride and lowered his tone an octave. “No. I don’t mind. Be ready about three o’clock. Okay?”

Turning, it was all he could do not to click his heels as he left the barn.

H
ANNAH ENTERED
the kitchen at exactly three o’clock.

Nate whistled. Ty turned toward her, holding his breath and hoping he wouldn’t start hyperventilating again when his gaze settled on her.

Howard’s shirt had been bad enough, but the salmon-colored cable knit that hugged her now was worse.

“I, uh…” She scooped back a few strands of hair that had come loose. She’d pulled it into some kind of unfathomable knot at the base of her neck—a style that might be appropriate for show jumping, or perhaps a coronation.

He could imagine her with a tiara. Who the hell was she?

“I’ve never been to a stock show,” she said. “Do I look all right?”

“Yeah, I think you look all right,” Nate said. “What do you think, Ty? She look all right to you?”

Wasn’t it bad enough that his brain went limp every time
she walked into the room? Did Nate always have to be there to narrate his every problem? “You look fine,” Ty said, and Nate laughed.

“Well, you two better be on your way. I told ol’ Houdini there’d be women at the show, and he’s all hepped up to go. Don’t want him to tear the trailer apart.”

“You ready?” Ty asked her.

“I’ll just get my suitcase,” she said, and turning, reappeared in a moment with the same leather bag he’d watched her tote through the snow while wearing nothing but a towel and a glare.

“Wow!” Nate said, staring at the gargantuan thing.

“That’s what I said the first time I saw her…
it!
” Ty corrected.

Hannah’s gaze met his. Silence ruled the world.

Ty cleared his throat. “We’re off,” he said, and taking the suitcase from her, practically ran for the door before he could hear Nate’s inane lyrics float after him.

“W
HAT DO YOU MEAN
it’s the best you can do?” Ty asked.

The teenager behind the counter looked beyond bored. In fact, in a stupor to be totally accurate. His head had been shaved some days before. Only a shadow of hair showed on his scalp. There was a silver hoop through his right ear. A chain ran from it to his nostril.

Apparently the twenty-first century had arrived in North Dakota. Tyrel was not the least bit surprised to learn he wasn’t prepared for it.

“The stock show thing’s a big deal around here,” the boy said, sounding bored. “You should have made reservations early, man.”

“I did make—” Ty began, then took a deep breath and stopped. “Just give me my key.”

It was delivered with less than good grace.

Ty found Hannah just as she was leaving the ladies’ rest room. He cleared his throat. “We’ve got a small problem.”

“It’s not Houdini!”

“No.” The bull was still in the trailer. After seeing how busy Valley Green was, they’d decided they’d best secure their own lodging first. “Houdini’s fine. It’s just…” He had seen her temper and really didn’t care to have it displayed here in the hallway of the Super 8. Especially now, when they were just beginning to forge a fragile peace between them. “I couldn’t get two rooms.”

She stared at him, her brows slightly raised.

“I know this sounds like a cheap romance novel, but I
swear I didn’t mean to do this. Nate and I were planning to come together, so we thought we might as well share a room, seeing as how Nate’s hardly ever around anyway. So I thought, hell, why pay extra,” he blathered, feeling panicked. “Anyhow, we reserved a room with two double beds. But now the kid at the desk says we only have one single. And I know this sounds like some kind of sleazy ploy, but I swear to God, I didn’t expect—”

“So we only have one room?” Her voice was soft. A bad sign. Ty tensed.

“’Fraid so.”

“With one bed?”

He cleared his throat. “One
twin
bed.”

He all but winced as he waited for her temper to blow. But instead, she lifted one shoulder and reached for the key.

“This place is packed like Macy’s on sale day,” she said. “If I scream someone’s sure to hear me.”

He stared at her in dumbfounded silence.

The corner of a grin lifted her apricot lips. He narrowed his eyes, suspicious.

“What are you saying?”

She laughed, actually laughed. “I’m saying, I think I can trust you, Mr. Fox,” she declared, and turning, headed for the stairs.

He felt as though he’d entered the twilight zone, and the kid at the front desk had been the gatekeeper.

Hannah opened their room door and stepped inside. Ty followed, carrying her gargantuan suitcase and his own duffel bag. He stood by the wall like a lost child.

“So you’re okay with this?” he asked, knowing he was acting like a fool, but desperately wondering what had happened to the woman who said she’d rather be fricasseed and served with cheap wine than spend a minute in his company. Had she, perhaps, come to care for him, or did she think she had him so cowed, he wouldn’t possibly try anything out of line? The idea, he realized, had some merit. And yet he wasn’t
at all certain he had the discipline to spend a chaste
minute
in her company, much less a whole night!

“Sure. I’m okay with this,” she said, taking her luggage from him and wrestling it onto a foldout stand made just for that purpose. “I’ve seen
It Happened One Night.
”

“It Happened One Night?”
He frantically searched his mind. But if he had ever seen that movie, he couldn’t remember it. He could only hope that it was a film where the couple had made frantic, passionate love from dusk to dawn, but somehow he doubted it.

“Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert,” she explained. “They hung a blanket between them. It was perfectly respectable.”

“A blanket.” he said. Just being in the same hotel room with her was making his fingernails sweat “I get kind of cold at night ‘Fraid there might not be any blankets to spare.” To his surprise, she laughed at him as she unbuckled her suitcase. It opened in a moment and he caught a glimpse of a skimpy bit of lace.

“We’d best see to Houdini,” she said.

He tried to agree, but his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth and his gaze glued to the lacy scrap that would cover some part of her anatomy that he’d dreamed of a thousand times.

She closed her suitcase and cleared her throat. “Tyrel?”

“Yeah,” he said, breaking from his reverie, and feeling foolishly certain that his eyeballs had popped out like Roger Rabbit’s. “Yeah, you’re right Just…just come on down when you’re ready,” he said, then fled like a panicked colt.

I
T WAS A SHORT DRIVE
from the hotel to the show grounds. In a matter of minutes, the paperwork was done and Ty had Houdini secured to a metal ring set in a wall at the end of a row of other Anguses.

Hannah eyed the others. Shiny black and immaculately clean, they looked like so many preppy students parked beside
a grungy teenager. But Houdini seemed oblivious to his shortcoming, and eyed them like a king amongst peasantry.

“I got my work cut out for me, don’t I?” Ty said, wincing a little as he perused his only entry.

“Are you telling me you want him to look like them?” Hannah asked, nodding toward the preppy row of blacks.

“Like that only better,” Ty corrected.

“Then I think you’re going to need my help.”

“Listen, Hannah.” He smiled and her heart thwopped painfully in her chest. How on earth was she going to keep from throwing herself at him before they returned home? Maybe Claudette Colbert could manage a chaste night, but she’d only had to resist Clark Gable, who, by the way, had big ears. Even Tyrel’s ears were sexy. “I really didn’t bring you here to get more work out of you. Just go relax. Rest that ankle. Have a look around.”

“And leave you here with mud boy?” she asked. Perhaps she should be honest, admit her weakness. But the thought of telling him that she wanted nothing more than to help him wash manure off a bovine’s rump was more than her rumpled pride could endure. “Believe me, he needs a woman’s touch,” she said.

“Don’t we all?”

His tone was as soft and tough as chamois, making her breath stop and her heart go wild.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that. Go have a good time, Hannah. You don’t want to get your good clothes dirty.”

“They’re not good.”

“They look good,” he said, then cleared his throat and grinned sheepishly as if he wished he could draw the words back. “Go on, Hannah, before I make a complete fool of myself.”

She stared at him. Could it be he really cared about her? Could it be his concern for her wasn’t just driven by hormones or an empty wallet, as her past relationships had been?

“I’m helping you,” she said.

He started to protest, but she stopped him, and finally he turned away. She watched him bend to rummage about in a large, wooden trunk he’d already carried in. His jeans stretched tight over his muscled backside. In many ways, it was far more intriguing even than his ears.

“Here. You can wear these,” he said, straightening. She snapped her gaze from his behind to the rolled-up garment in his hand.

Their fingers brushed as she reached for it Her breath caught in her throat, but she forced herself to ignore it and keep her gaze on the overalls. “Let me guess. Howard’s?” she asked. The embroidered name near the collar proved her right.

“Believe me, we’ll both be safer once you’re in them.” His voice was husky.

She had intended to refuse, but the sound of his husky voice was muddling her thinking, and in a moment she had removed her half boots and was pulling up the lightweight overalls.

“This is a bad sign,” she said, pulling up the rusty zipper with some difficulty. “They fit.”

He was silent for a moment as he stared at her. But he yanked his gaze away in an instant. “I knew Howard a long time. Those are from his younger days. He didn’t age real pretty.”

“Maybe it’s the life-style.”

“I take that personally,” he said, then as she slipped into her suede boots, he produced a pair of large overboots.

She raised her brows. “Yours?” she asked.

“No.” One corner of his lips lifted into a satyr’s grin. “My rubbers are much, much bigger.”

A
FEW HOURS LATER
, Houdini was a new bull. He’d been bathed, shaved, brushed and primped.

Hannah, on the other hand, had been hosed down, worn-out,
butted and trampled on. And never had she had more fun.

“Well, Howard,” Ty said. He’d taken to calling her that sometime before, after an acquaintance of Ty’s had mistaken her from behind and greeted her as Howard. “I feel like I’ve been run over by a steam shovel. Bed will feel like heaven.”

Bed!

Their gazes met They were standing very close, and for one frantic second, she hoped he would kiss her, right there and then in front of the cows and everything.

“Ty!” someone called, shattering the moment.

Tyrel turned away with an effort. “Walt,” he said.

Hannah steadied herself, trying to find her equilibrium.

“Hey. Didn’t know if I’d see you here or not,” said the newcomer. His belly was as big as an apple barrel, testing the buttons on his striped shirt.

“Yeah, we brought Houdini here,” Ty said, nodding toward the Angus.

“Oh,” Walt said, but he didn’t look at the bull. Instead, his gaze slipped from Hannah’s face to her name tag. “Howard,” he said. “You’re looking good.”

For a moment she was stymied. Her world had turned upside down. She shouldn’t be grooming a bull. She shouldn’t be seen wearing powder blue overalls and someone’s discarded baseball cap. And she certainly shouldn’t be enjoying it But her cheeks were sore from laughing and the thought of spending a night with Tyrel Fox made her feel as though her hormones were exploding. So she stuck out her hand, swaggered a little, and said in her best baritone, “Good to see you again, Walt”

“I
THOUGHT OLD
W
ALT
was going to bust a gut,” Tyrel said, pushing aside his plate and sipping his coffee. He may be an idiot, but he wasn’t fool enough to share the wine Hannah had ordered with her shrimp. Tonight was going to be trying enough without confusing the issue with alcohol. Just helping
her from her wet overalls had nearly been more than his wilting self-control could handle.

She glanced across the dining table as she set her flute aside. It was constantly amazing to him how her eyes could show a thousand emotions without her luscious little mouth changing a whit. “I rather felt like Howard by the time I was done.”

“I didn’t think so.”

The memory of him wrestling with Howard’s rusty zipper snapped between them.

He froze, trying to change the subject, to pretend he hadn’t spoken another inappropriate word. Geez! He had to think of something to say, to smooth over the moment. But nothing clever came to mind. Only the truth.

“It’s not my fault,” he said with resignation.

She stared at him with those unearthly blue eyes, and suddenly there seemed little reason to pretend his stomach didn’t knot and his wits didn’t dissolve every time she was near.

“I don’t mean to say such harebrained things to you, but my mind has turned to silage. It happened the first time I saw you in them white pants, standing in the slush beside that damned Rabbit.” He shrugged, knowing he’d taken the final leap. But in truth, he’d leaped long ago, and she’d torn his heart to shreds. He had nothing to lose. Pride was overvalued anyway, he assured himself. “My wits haven’t returned yet. So I’m warning you now, Hannah…” He stared into his coffee, then took another sip. “A blanket hung between us wouldn’t do no more good than a red cape with a Spanish bull. If I were you I’d wear steel armor and knock me over the head with a baseball bat just to be on the safe side.”

The truth lay between them like a live grenade.

She lowered her gaze to her wineglass, and for a moment he thought her hand trembled.

“And what if I don’t want to be on the safe side?”

Her words were very soft, but he heard them. They curled
through his mind, then sparked through every nerve, setting his body on red alert.

“What?” he murmured, just in case he had been wrong. In case his own dreams had somehow deluded him.

“I think…” She paused as her long, slim fingers curled around the stem of the glass. “I think maybe I’ve been playing it safe all my life.”

He tried to keep breathing. It was an abject failure. “There’s something to be said for taking risks,” he said. His voice sounded odd, he thought, as if he’d been kicked in the belly by a Clydesdale.

She cleared her throat and lifted her gaze to his. “Are you ready to go?”

“Yeah!” The word was two octaves too high for sure and far too eager. He tried again. “Yeah,” he said, lowering his voice. “If you are.”

He wouldn’t have blamed her a bit if she’d laughed at him. But instead she smiled nervously. “Yes, I’m ready.”

The drive to the hotel was absolutely quiet, the climb up the stairs the same. Hannah opened the door.

Ty closed it behind them, and then they stood in the dim light of the lamp. They gazed about the room as if another living soul wasn’t doing the very same thing only inches away.

He could feel her tension, and took a deep breath in an attempt to relieve his own. “Listen, Hannah, I don’t mean to twist your arm. I know I’ve been—”

But suddenly she was kissing him. His gut clenched and his mind did that little whirring thing it did when she so much as breathed. Now it reacted like a helicopter in full flight.

For a moment he just stood there like a bull-tromped clown, and then he slipped his hand around her waist and kissed her back. Feelings sizzled through him, sparking from one nerve ending to the next with lightning speed until his whole body was ablaze.

It was then that she drew away.

“Geez, woman, where’d you learn to kiss like that?” He barely managed the words, what with his mind whirring and his gut clenching, and his knees beginning to buckle.